June 25th, 2023
Rena once told Keiichi, in a certain time, in a certain fragment, that both happiness and sadness were like clouds blowing across the sky: neither stayed forever, and so you should savor your happiness while you had it.
It was very important, to her, that she stayed happy.
Rena had gone through so much- her father had gone through so much- she needed to stay happy now, to show that she was okay, to make sure he didn't worry.
And she was- she was truly happy, most of the time. It wasn't like she had to fake it. She had such wonderful friends, and they had such amazing times playing together, and she found such adorable things in her favorite trash heap. Rena was all but bubbling with happiness, most of the time.
But like a grey tint that she just couldn't wash away, her sadness kept persistently showing up again. Joy might still be curling around the edges of her lips; the echoes of her laughter might still be thrumming in her chest; but Rena would suddenly feel her mood dampen, a sudden heavy sadness dragging at her. The gloomy thought of but this isn't forever.
She tried to take comfort in that: that even if her happiness wasn't forever, her sadness wouldn't be, either. Surely one was as effective as the other.
But it felt like, sometimes, on those black nights when she stared with aching eyes at the yawning emptiness beside her futon, the place where Oyashiro-sama used to hover, that her sadness would last forever. It was like a mire she would sink down into, clogging her limbs, pulling her inexorably down as she thought of her life in Ibaraki, and her mother, and the sullen itch in her veins.
It was so frustrating, how she would struggle and struggle and manage to squeeze out a few moments of cheer, a few laughs, a few smiles, and then the gloom would close over her again, its grip clinging to her ankles and her neck and drowning her in apathetic sorrow.
It wasn't fair.
Rena tried so hard to be happy, it wasn't fair that sadness could flow in and taint it so easily.
That was why she always, always made the effort to smile sunnily and greet Keiichi-kun with true enthusiasm when they met each other on the walk to school. That was why she made sure to spot seven beautiful, interesting, or cute things on their walk there. That was why she threw herself with full passion into their club games, and tried to treasure each and every moment she spent with her friends as though it was the first moment of its kind.
If Rena tried hard enough, if she hoarded all of these little fragments of happiness and kept them close in her heart, then surely it would be enough to drive off that persistent, cloying sadness, and banish it for good.
9.38 AM, USA Central Time